A visitor to the vandalized Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia views some of the toppled tombstones, Feb. 26, 2017. (Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Sometime between the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 17, and the following Monday morning, vandals damaged 170 gravestones at the Chesed Shel Emeth Jewish cemetery outside St. Louis.

Beyond that, cemetery staffers aren’t sure when the attack happened. Groundskeepers leave at 4 pm Fridays, and the cemetery is open to the public, unstaffed, all day Sunday. An employee discovered the damaged headstones Monday morning. [Read more…]

The front page of the first issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, published October 22, 1937.

The Ottawa Jewish Bulletin celebrates our 80th anniversary in 2017 and the entire collection of Bulletins in the Ottawa Jewish Archives has been digitized and is being made accessible online free of charge.

The Ottawa Jewish Archives is pleased to announce the completion of a digitization project providing online access to the complete run of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin from 1937 to present.

“Ottawa Jewish Bulletin Online” is a digitization project with the goal of providing free universal online access to the Ottawa Jewish Archives collection of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. The project was undertaken in the lead up to 2017, Canada’s 150th Anniversary of Confederation and the Bulletin’s 80th Anniversary year. [Read more…]

Constance Glube “left the Canadian justice system richer and more effective than she found it. We are all indebted to her,” said Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Chief justice of Nova Scotia was first female chief justice in Canada

Constance Glube was a trailblazer who rose to the highest ranks of the Canadian legal profession traditionally dominated by men. She was a champion of the rights of minorities and women, and a mentor for women in the law. Glube spent her career committed “to overcoming the gender, ethnic, and religious barriers of her era.”

The daughter of Pearl and Sam Lepofsky, active members of Ottawa’s Jewish community, Glube graduated from McGill University in 1952 and from Dalhousie University Law School in 1955. At a time when women didn’t often attend law school, no less practise in the profession, she began a journey of many firsts for women and the law. One of only two women in her graduating class, Glube remained in Nova Scotia where she married and established her career. [Read more…]

“My objective is to provide services to our stakeholders at the level they expect,” says Sylvain Beaudry, the recently-appointed CFO of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, SJCC and OJCS. (Michael Regenstreif)

Sylvain Beaudry brings a wide range of experience to his new role as chief financial officer of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation, the Soloway JCC and Ottawa Jewish Community School.

Sylvain Beaudry is no stranger to accepting challenges with confidence and professionalism.

“I was impressed with Sylvain from the moment I met him during the interview process,” said Jewish Federation of Ottawa Chair Linda Kerzner. “He had a unique combination of experience and skill sets that stood out from the other candidates. It’s so special to find someone who was a business owner, served in the military, and worked in the charitable world. That range of experience has enabled him to confidently accept any challenge thrown at him – as shown by our experiences with him in this short period of time.” [Read more…]

Rabbi Yehuda Simes is surrounded by Torah High students and staff on his return to the classroom in 2011.

Rabbi Yehuda Simes, a beloved educator in Ottawa’s Jewish community, died of pneumonia on February 7 at Queensway Carleton Hospital. He was 49.

Rabbi Simes had been an immensely popular Judaic studies teacher at the Ottawa Jewish Community School (OJCS) and at Torah High – an institution he co-founded – when a tragic highway accident on June 20, 2010 near Orleans, N.Y., left him a quadriplegic. [Read more…]

(JTA) – The Israeli Air Force retaliated for rocket fire from Gaza with strikes targeting five Hamas positions in the coastal strip.

It was not known if the targeted positions were hit by Monday’s airstrikes, which came in response to a rocket fired hours earlier that landed in an open area of the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council in southern Israel early in the morning, the Israel Defense Forces spokesman said. No damage or injuries were reported. [Read more…]

(JTA) – A man who stabbed a fellow Jewish Israeli in a suburban Haifa parking lot after mistaking him for an Arab was sentenced to 11 years in prison on his attempted murder conviction.

Shlomo Pinto of Kiryat Ata was sentenced Monday in Haifa District court for the October 2015 attack in the IKEA parking lot. He also was ordered to pay his victim more than $13,000 in compensation. [Read more…]

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Hundreds of haredi Orthodox men and women and religious Zionist female seminary students disrupted the monthly Rosh Chodesh morning service of the Women of the Wall group.

About 150 women who gathered at the women’s section of the Western Wall Plaza to celebrate the new Jewish month of Adar had to push their way through a chain of religious women attempting to hold them back. Police ultimately broke up the crowd to allow the Women of the Wall to get through. [Read more…]